Maintenance Practices and Costs of Rail -Trails

For the past three decades of rail-trail development, maintenance costs have generally been seen as being expensive. These expenses, however, have remained largely untracked on a state or national basis. Further, a comprehensive breakdown and ranking of maintenance priorities did not exist.

To better understand this issue, RTC conducted a comprehensive survey of trail maintenance costs. Results of this study show that, contrary to popular belief, maintenance costs are not as high as many perceive them to be.